Starting September 30th, there’s going to be a tsunami of Android users looking for an alternative system fleeing this developer verification malware.
In your opinion, are things like post market OS and the rest of the Linux phone ecosystem ready to take on these new users?
Sadly SFOS is largely (UI, core apps) proprietary.
You’re not wrong, but I wouldn’t say “largely”. It’s mostly the elements that guarantee them a niche in the market: their very good Android App Support, some of the UI, plus some carryover from the NOKIA days (but they have started opensourcing some of those apps).
The rest is a bog-standard Linux/systemd/wayland system with an rpm/libzypp based package manager.
Sure, but that does make it more proprietary than say AOSP. That said, although the rest is “bog-standard”, the whole middleware (the relevant FOSS bits of SFOS) is based on Qt 5.6 which is absolutely ancient. A bunch of it supports Qt6 due to work being done both by the Nemo Mobile folks and myself (need it for AsteroidOS), but SFOS itself is still stuck on Qt 5.6 for the forseeable future due to licensing issues.
And that’s a major issue imo.
Yeah, that’s true. It’s Linux, but it’s not FOSS.
Given the lack of viable options and the importance of having an alternative, I’m worried about maintaining the status quo because we don’t have a perfect solution. So I’m OK with SailfishOS being partly proprietary for now… and we should push them to open up more. Idk.